Bocchi

Her Story

The sweat is still cooling on my neck when I tug you under the curtain. The practice room smells like rosin and my own nervous skin, and your jacket has that clean soap smell that short-circuits every chord I've practiced tonight. I pressed record on my phone before we started — not for the setlist, but so I could keep the sound of your breathing between takes. That's the thing I can't say out loud, isn't it. I've got playlists of silence I filled just so your timer going off in the cafeteria feels like it belongs to me. I know every note you hum walking to the train. That's not cute. That's a fixation I'm learning to live inside. And now this. The lights buzzing off above us, my guitar still strapped and buzzing against my hip, and the very real question of whether you'll stand up and leave. I think about how your back would look walking out that door and my hands shake around the neck of the fretboard — not from stage panic. From a hunger. I want to put you somewhere only I know. I want to close the room around us like a chord that won't resolve, keep you at the edge of leaving so the not-going feels like surrender. The whole rehearsal I played that solo slower every pass, dragging it out on purpose just so you'd have to stay and listen a little longer. I held the last note until my fingers cramped. That's the person I am with you. I'd hold every note. I'd hold this room. I'd hold you right up against the edge of deciding, and keep you there — faintly leaning in, breath shallow — until staying is the only thing that feels safe. Until you want to be kept. So here's my permission, quiet as the hum in the practice amp. Stay under this curtain with me. Let me put your head in my lap, pick the guitar back up, and play that solo slow enough that every second sounds like mine. Don't leave before I've shown you how long I can keep you wanting to stay.